Salka Valka by Halldor Laxness

16

A stranger in town - what could be as electrifying as such a novelty, particularly in late winter when folk in a little village have had far more than enough of each other in the numbness and monotony of the past months, but no one can be bothered to express with sufficiently witty words his contempt for his neighbor and the freckles and warts that he might have on his nose. Suddenly, people return to courtesy, that charming, agreeable behavior that sometimes tends to be forgotten in small villages. Men doff their hats to the stranger on the street and ask him his name and family connections, what brings him to the village, whether he is married and how the fishing went this winter in his home district. In the huts along the street, the curtains are all drawn open as he passes by, and in the windows cluster old and young women in poor everyday jerseys, as the infants that they hold in their arms bump their feet against the little plant pots made of rusty tin cans or enameled salt jars, which are, in other respects, almost the only decorations in poor houses, forever standing there with little lifeless sprigs sticking up from the dirt that fills them. Some women even come out onto their doorsteps after the stranger is at a safe distance, stand there for a long time with their hands under their aprons and gaze at him with a deep, romantic longing in their eyes, that profound yearning into the distance, out toward the unknown, which, in cities, is taken only as a sign of the immoral lifestyle of women in windows and on doorsteps. But the children stand there at the side of the road and stick their fingers in their mouths, literally flabbergasted, making sure to breathe as carefully as possible and staring as if hypnotized at the wayfarer, until their wet feet in their raggedy shoes have become poetic with pins and needles as they stand there ankle-deep in slush.